The Texas Education Agency must do more to hold accountable current employees who were involved in a botched 2010 investigation of cheating in the El Paso Independent School District, said state Sen. José Rodríguez, D-El Paso.

"Put simply, many of these individuals shirked their responsibility to the students," he wrote. "If the individuals employed in the various TEA divisions and departments, such as the Office of Inspector General, are not tasked with ensuring the integrity of our schools, then who is?" Rodríguez said in a letter Friday to Education Commissioner Michael Williams.

But Williams has said that he plans no personnel actions against current TEA employees because the State Auditor's Office report said the agency's inability to catch cheating at EPISD and elsewhere came from a failure of leadership by his predecessor, Robert Scott, and Deputy Commissioner Ray Glynn.

Advertisement

Neither is now a TEA employee.

The administrator who directly oversaw the EPISD investigation in 2010, Emi Johnson, remains director of special investigations at the agency and also is likely to play a role in the new accountability office TEA is creating in response to the state auditor's report.

The report found that TEA officials inadequately investigated claims of cheating at EPISD by then-state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh. The state auditor also found that TEA had no significant ability to detect or investigate cheating on state and federal accountability measures.

James Anderson, EPISD's former assistant superintendent of high schools, has said he alerted Scott, Glynn and Johnson in June 2010 about allegations of transcript alterations at Bowie High School. He said he asked TEA to do an investigation, but was told by Johnson that EPISD should conduct an internal investigation.

The district's internal auditor in August 2010 found that dozens of Bowie transcripts had been altered, including illegal grade changes and unexplained promotions from ninth to 11th grade. But then-Superintendent Lorenzo García ordered the audit kept in draft form so that it wouldn't be subject to open records laws, documents later obtained by the El Paso Times showed.

Later in 2010, Johnson twice issued reports clearing EPISD of cheating. There is no indication that she ever asked EPISD about the internal investigation into the Bowie transcripts.

The Times in 2012 obtained numerous documents, including the internal Bowie audit, that documented efforts to cheat federal accountability measures. The focus of the scheme was to keep Mexican immigrant students and others out of the 10th grade, which is the testing level used for federal accountability purposes.

The U.S. Department of Education in July released an audit report that confirmed the Times' findings and also documented efforts to game the accountability system at Coronado High School in West El Paso.

Anderson resigned earlier this year after the school board began the process of firing him for his alleged role in the cheating scheme. He has denied wrongdoing and said he tried to alert state officials.

Scott left TEA in July 2012, and in August the agency's interim leader imposed sanctions on EPISD over the cheating scheme.

Williams became commissioner in September 2012, and in December he increased the sanctions against EPISD, removing the school board and replacing it with a five-member Board of Managers. The appointed board took office this spring after the Justice Department signed off on the action.

Rodríguez said in an interview he could not say whether Johnson or any other specific individual should be answerable for the investigative failures until a further investigation takes place.

"At this point, I'm not going to jump to conclusions that any one individual was so responsible that they ought to be disciplined. I can't say that until there's a full investigation to determine what role they played and what they did or didn't do," he said.

State Rep. Marisa Márquez, while praising Williams' actions to shed light on the failures involving EPISD, said she wanted to see a plan for the agency to examine the inaction and failure of TEA employees.

"If the commissioner needs to be reflective on the agency and say, 'Look, this was an error in judgment on your part, you should have done more,' that needs to happen," she said. "Just like it would at any other agency, just like it would at a school district." TEA officials said a further review of employee actions regarding the EPISD investigation is unlikely.

Johnson was the only member of the special investigations unit at TEA during the time of the inquiry into EPISD.

TEA spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe said that Johnson, currently the director of special investigations, is expected to play a role in a new accountability office recommended in the state auditor's report.

The agency declined a request for an interview with Johnson. And Ratcliffe said it was unlikely that the agency would pursue another inquiry into staffers' performance.

"The audit itself was our effort to identify where things went wrong and so that's why the commissioner asked the auditor to do that," she said.

Márquez said she understood the inclination of TEA to want to turn the page on the El Paso cheating scandal and the bungled investigation, but the public needs to know how similar failures will be prevented in the future.

"We have to understand where was the breakdown, why are the districts not getting the support that they need and why are teachers not being protected," she said. "I'd like to hear a plan, what you plan to do to rectify and what you plan to do to hold these people accountable."

Andrew Kreighbaum covers the El Paso Independent School District. He can be reached at 546-6127.